...the big two-five.

yup, last week i celebrated my 25th birthday, a quarter of my life gone by. the b-day celebrations seemed to be quite endless:

in class, one student (acting as the seven dwarfs in their fairytale performance) starting singing 'happy birthday' and was joined in by the rest of the class. that was touching.

i got plenty of text messages from students, several of who added 'i love you' in the text. that was also touching.

i went out to lunch with a student who basically ignored the fact that it was my b-day because she just wanted to practice english with me. that was disappointing ... but, afterwards, i met up with hankou group plus nicole for our weekly devotion/mini-birthday bash. cream cheese bagels, a 'happy gram' from miss joanna smith in america, and her amazing cake pops ... again, so touching.

aaron and i had to cancel our study that night because we had promised students that we would join a singing competition. (i hope to share pictures of this soon.) we finished quite late and were invited out for a late-night snack with some students. i won't blog about what we did that night. and, if you ask me what we did that night, i'll probably respond with, 'i'll tell you when you're older.' ^^ no, in all seriousness, we had a tremendous amount of fun and i have a 25th birthday memory that i pray will never fade. just know that i went to bed late that night with a big smile on my face.

so, my birthday was on a thursday, but the party continued until friday. i received many birthday wishes from students (since i have like a million classes on this day - aka six classes, but it is a lot). and, when school was finally over at 4:35pm, it was time for relaxation and pizza for dinner. the hankou group minus kelsey and three of our chinese friends, bonnie, shirly, and sylvia, met up for more papa john's pizza. it was a fun night of eating too much pizza and chocolaty brownies, hanging out with friends, and taking pictures of china's silly christmas deco. yet again, so touching.

everything on these days just seemed so perfect, so fun. just like many chinese people say, 'i was so moved by it.' i hope and pray that your upcoming holiday days are as cheerful as this. soli deo gloria.